Promotion

Michelle Yeoh to play Aung San Suu Kyi?

At first I thought that this story would be not much more than a rumour or an inside source story building on the fact that Michelle Yeoh and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy campaigner who had been under house arrest for a total of almost fifteen years until last month, had maybe bumped into each other. However that isn't the case, and the two have actually spent some time together.

Now there's no further word on whether there's a film in the works or if Yeoh is researching her for a potential the role, but they have had dinner together and were seen chatting at the airport. Was it a passing meeting or something more?

The story doesn't have any more information, but the idea that there could be a film in early production about Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't sound too far fetched, nor does it that Michelle Yeoh could play her.

According to Wikipedia Aung San Suu Kyi is a politician on the opposition in Burma, and a former General Secretary of the National League for Democracy who stood in the 1990 general election and saw her party receive fifty nine percent of the national vote as well as eighty one percent of the seats in parliament, however she had already been detained for speaking against the ruling government and she has remained in house arrest for some fifteen of the last twenty one years.

She is the third sibling of Aung San who is considered to be the father of modern Burma, and through her term under arrest she was awarded the Rafto and Sakharov Prizes for Freedom of Thought, the Nobel Peace Prize, the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding from the Indian government, the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the Venezuela government and the Olof Palme Prize.

She was released on the thirteenth of November some seven years after her last house arrest began, and just a week after the first elections were held in Myanmar in more than twenty years, elections that her and her party were banned from entering, because they would no doubt win as they did twenty years ago.

There's lots more to her as a person and a light for democracy in the country, and you can read all about her over at Wikipedia.

Yahoo News has the story that Michelle Yeoh met with her. Aung San Suu Kyi's lawyer stated that:

"...observed Daw Suu and they had dinner together Monday night"

Daw is a term of respect in Burma and is the name that many Burmese people use to refer to her.

Then they were seen together in the Yangon International Airport along with Aung San Suu Kyi's son Kim Aris who had been allowed to come from Britain to visit her for the first time in a decade. They were chatting in a waiting room there before both Yeoh and Kim Aris left for their flights.

The real question would be if this was a personal visit, a chance encounter, or if it genuinely was something more and perhaps looking at a future role for the actress. The article suggests that a film is in development.

The story of Aung San Suu Kyi would be a very interesting one and would definitely voice the injustice towards her and democracy in the country, especially if it looked to her time from the elections over twenty years ago and the elections just a few weeks passed.

Then there's the fact that Yeoh would be an excellent actress to play her, and it would be great to see her on screen in a more dramatic role that doesn't call for martial arts.

Could there really be a film in development and this was just one meeting that Yeoh could manage to arrange with Aung San Suu Kyi? For surely the government would want to do everything they could to stop such a film being made, and allowing a film star to speak with her would be the last thing they'd want.